A blog for fans of intelligent horror in fiction and film. Look here for reviews, analysis, and practical information on how to deal with demons and live with the living dead.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Absentia

I have posted a lot of horror
movie reviews over the years, but not so many of late.I just haven’t seen very many films
interesting enough to review.I am happy
to say that I found one on Netflix Instant Watch: Absentia.This independent
film was written and directed by Mike Flanagan.I hope he has more where this one came from, because it is one of the
best horror movies I have seen in the last decade.

The film begins with a woman (Courtney
Bell) replacing a weathered missing person notice on a poll with a fresh one
that she pulls out of a large leather bag.Tricia’s husband disappeared seven years prior.Though she is in the process of applying for
a death certificate and is in fact pregnant, she is clearly having trouble
letting go.Her younger sister Callie
(Katie Parker) arrives to lend moral support.Callie is almost but not quite drug free.These items of emotional baggage are the
material which the fine cinematography and haunting score can work on.

In view from Tricia’s front
stoop is the opening of one of those pedestrian tunnels that run under a
highway.If you have ever walked through
one, you may recall that they are ominous enough all on their own in broad daylight.Callie has brought a gift for the baby: a
copy of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.In
case you are wondering, that’s a clue.

I won’t reveal any more
details, for this is one film that tells its story efficiently and
effectively.An event that occurs about
a third of the way through ratchets the story up to another level.It ratchets up again a bit later into full
bore horror.

I have had an affection for
spooky stories all my life.I am not
alone, to judge by the volume of horror cinema produced each year.I like the tension produced by wanting and
not wanting to see what is just out of sight.The film keeps this tension perfectly balanced all the way through.

I also like the way that a good
horror films explores the architecture of human fear and the way that cultures
have managed and exploited those fears.At its best, the horror genre affords new ways to see and map that
architecture.Evolutionary psychology
has noted that phobias form around things that tended to kill our
ancestors.That is why we fear spiders
but not automobiles or tobacco.A fear
of tight spaces, darkness, and being dragged away not only haunted our
ancestors but also haunted our ancestor’s ancestors.These are the stuff of fairy tales.Absentia
is a modern fairy tale, as dark as the unexpurgated versions of those that
emerge from the darkness of Europe and other places.

More than one character in the
film articulates the modern view of such stories.In addition to being entertaining, they are
one of the ways that we manage our fears of what we cannot predict and what we
cannot secure ourselves against.That is
a rational, scientific interpretation of the supernatural and it describes how
things really are.I don’t believe in
real demons or malevolent ghosts.

However, once you step over the
line between world time and dream time, as you must to enjoy the story, the
relationship between myth and rational interpretation reverses itself.In horror land, the rational interpretation
is the lie that we tell ourselves in order to avoid facing very dark realities.

One very neat trick that the
movie pulls is to give us different visual accounts of the same event.First we see something horrifying happen that
leaves no doubt about the supernatural forces at work.Then a character will see in his or her mind
how it might have happened a different way, with only ordinary forces at
work.For a moment the viewer has to
wonder which view is the real one; but only for a moment, happily.The rational interpretation is
self-deception.

So long as you know the difference
between fiction and reality, it can be enlightening to see what the world looks
like the other way round.It is a useful
reminder that reason and common sense are not the same things a knowledge, even
if they are the best guides to truth and practice.It is certainly entertaining, if you like the
spooky tale.Absentia is an almost
flawless horror film.